Polymer Chemist here with an interest in greener chemistry. I can kinda talk on this. I did contract R&D for a company looking to develop a plant based feedstock for polyurethanes, and I can share some insights.

You are absolutely correct: turning arable land from food to chemical production can cause issues. But then there are so many inefficiencies in our food chain. The USDA estimates that 30-40% of all food produced gets wasted. There have been plans/talks of using more vertical farming and hydroponics to reduce the physical footprint, and some vertical farms are in development.

USDA Food Waste Source

There has also been a big push in my field to use more microorganisms to produce chemicals and polymers. These bio reactors take up significantly less space than traditional farming, and there has been success in modifying bacterial to make small molecules we produce from petroleum refining.

Someone else mentioned that there are issues with these various terpenes have low volatility, which is also true. I would mention that they may not be the best solvents for everything, they can absolutely replace petroleum based chemicals in other applications. Think as to how many cleaners have some variation of “Citrus Powered” in their marketing, and they work better than traditional solvents.

I feel that as a public, we assume that a new technology will replace all of the old. That is not necessarily the case. We now have more options for solving a problem, and some of these solutions may involve lower energy consumption.